


Holocene

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, PWP equals porn with poetics, Rickyl, Season 3/4 Gap, prison era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4817561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rainy expedition and ten kinds of silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holocene

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MermaidSheenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/gifts).



> This story is dedicated to MermaidSheenaz - my cheerleader, muse, and all-around greatest inspiration.

Daryl lost his voice after the frost. The others laughed and said there wasn’t much voice to lose, but Rick, who knew otherwise, missed his raspy cadences. Daryl wasn’t sick or anything, he just marched into the canteen one morning unable to produce anything above a whisper. He shook his head when Hershel wanted to check him over and listen to his lungs, and with his eyes he told Rick they were still going out as intended.

It was misting when they left the prison, the air clammy with fog. Daryl switched on the wipers. This wasn’t a recruiting mission and it wasn’t a run either. Rick wouldn’t have gone it were, busy shoring up his garden for winter, but Daryl’s vigilance hadn’t waned. Even though the Governor’s trail had gone cold months ago, they still needed a refuge, a safe house, if ( _when_ said Daryl) he rolled up guns blazing someday. Daryl was right and, if Rick was honest, the withered post-autumnal garden held less allure than it had back in all its vernal fecundity.

Rick looked at Daryl’s hands relaxed on the wheel, the north star tattooed between thumb and forefinger on the hand nearest him. He let his eyes drift up Daryl’s arm, the sleeve of his jacket thin and threadbare across the elbow. The familiar breadth of Daryl’s broad shoulders. The dark sweep of his overlong hair. Then Daryl caught his eye and Rick felt his heart crack slowly like a pomegranate, showing its seeds. He looked away quickly, staring blankly at the road ahead. Heart beating like a piston.

Daryl navigated them along a bumpy back road, and when it grew too uneven he pulled over. They got out of the car and Rick turned his face up to the drizzle, feeling droplets bead on his eyelashes. Daryl jerked his head and they plunged into the woods, following a path only Daryl could see. Slipping a little in the mud; well, Rick was slipping. Ahead of him Daryl glided along as if there was an inch of air between his feet and the ground. Crossbow and Colt at the ready but they hadn’t seen a single walker. They passed through a campground and there was still garbage scattered about – cigarette butts, aluminum beer cans, used condoms draped like Christmas decorations over weed stalks – and but for the sense of desolation they could have been back in the old world. Daryl looked at him, brows quirked upward _whaddaya make of all this_ and Rick replied in the same manner _don’t think a bunch of rubbers is gonna do us much good._

The two of them, squelching and sliding through mud and dead leaves. After a while they sat on a log and ate the jerky and wizened apples Carol had packed for them. Feeling the damp chill of the log creeping into the seat of his pants, Rick shivered. The silence grew oppressive. _What are you looking for_ he said, and Daryl said _some kinda landmark._ Rick cracked his neck and fidgeted, wishing Daryl would get over his laryngitis so they could shoot the shit like they had before the cold spell. _S’matter?_ Daryl said and Rick said out loud, “Just thinking we oughta head back soon, if we can’t find what you’re looking for.” Which wasn’t what he meant at all. The wheres, the whats and the hows, but no whys. Daryl looked at him with narrow eyes that pointed straight at that omission.  

“We should probably get going,” Rick said again. Daryl was looking at him and his expression was impossible to read, the sharp planes of his face dark and obscure. “Days are shorter,” Rick said, jabbering now because he needed to fill the vastness between them. Then he heard the sounds of a river – Daryl must have been hearing it all along – and the next thing he knew they were kissing hard and hungry.

Daryl drew back but Rick moved with him and they kept kissing. It was like water in the desert, like hunger and the food he craved most – ice cream, tropical fruit. They gulped each other like starved puppies. Then they stopped and looked at each other. Daryl’s eyes had darkened to slate, the depths of them shimmering with amusement and ruefulness and a kind of vague sorrow that made Rick want to hold him close again.

But instead they set off towards the river, sluggish and brown. Rick looked at Daryl but Daryl was looking at the ground. So they tramped across the deathless damp flora, wrapped in several kinds of silence. The golden loam of fallen leaves was thicker than any carpet, so deep that even Rick’s elephantine feet were silent too. Daryl paused briefly to regard a dead mole and Rick stared at his back. Silence was just part of how he had learned to talk to Daryl. After they’d begun to communicate with their eyes, with a tilt of the head or a furtive hand signal, it had started to feel rude and even sort of rough when he forgot and said “yes” or “no” out loud. But Rick couldn’t talk to Daryl’s back; the thoughts just bounced off and returned unopened.

They came upon a green steel bridge arcing over the river. _This is a landmark_ Rick said and Daryl grunted affirmation. They had nearly reached the bank when the rain began to fall in earnest, so they darted underneath. Huddling there below the bridge, Rick inhaled the scent of moldy leaves and stagnant water and wondered about his own heart’s strength. He set his gun aside and impulsively threw an arm around Daryl’s shoulder. My buddy. Daryl shrugged the arm away and gave him a look of utter disgust.

So Rick gathered up his weak-skinned collapsing pomegranate of a heart, seeds and all, and ghosted his fingertips across Daryl’s cheek. Daryl shivered, his lips thinning into a tight line. Rick tugged the crossbow out of his fist, unprying Daryl’s icy cold fingers one by one. Unexpected to find themselves here, sheltering under a bridge like strange pilgrims, about to –

What? It was up to Daryl, he decided. Daryl had kissed him first, or no, maybe he had kissed Daryl, suddenly he wasn’t sure anymore. There was Carl and Judith back at the prison, and there had been Lori…

And now there was Daryl, immobile under his hand and somehow the answer to all of it. His own life, and more importantly his children’s lives, all bound up in one serendipitous moment, _Rick Grimes, you got something you wanna say to me?_ and _He’s part of our group, more or less._ Softer around the edges then, both of them, Rick a clean-shaved Rip Van Winkle still blinking at the world outside, and Daryl playing a role much too small for him.

“ _Rick_.”

It was a croak forced from the depths of his soul, through the constricting passage of a throat slamming shut on the final consonant. But it startled Rick from his trance and managed to get them kissing again. Daryl swiped his nimble tongue round the inside of Rick’s mouth, dodging teeth when Rick groaned and dragged him closer. _Yeah c’mon you bastard_ Daryl challenged, raking his fingers through Rick’s hair _quit fucken around._ Neither of them quite sure how they’d arrived here, but already this felt familiar, clumsy and rough as it was. Both of them trying to be gentle but Daryl’s hand catching in Rick’s hair and Rick’s teeth sinking into Daryl’s lower lip til it bled. Coppery tang joining the taste of apples.  

It struck him, as it had struck him before, many times before as if for the first time, that he wanted Daryl. Wanted him desperately; everything was life or death these days. But sucking a trail down his neck, licking the hollow of Daryl’s throat where rainwater was collecting in a tiny pool – …

Daryl snorted and his thoughts flooded Rick’s brain: Daryl was thinking how ungainly it would be, for Rick to fuck him or for him to fuck Rick. Two of everything, beard and stubble, lean muscle and bone and no softness anywhere. Like a pair of skeletons banging together. Daryl laughed at the picture, a breathy exhalation with a hoarse little chuckle at the end. And Rick scowled _goddammit be serious_ but then Daryl’s icy fingers slid into the warmth under his shirt and he yelped in shock. He retaliated, tugging at Daryl’s clothes, vest jacket shirt. Open but not off they decided, nipples already standing to attention in the chilly air. _Jesus fuck I want you._ Skin goosefleshed, they clung all the tighter, rubbing their chests together like they were trying to catch a fire between them.

And all the while Daryl’s eyes following him, glittering tunnels to the center of the universe. Daryl was already deep inside him. Rick tried to do the same but his eyes weren’t like Daryl’s. They were lost and always looking, confused by words said and unsaid.

Off came the pants and underwear too (only Rick had them) and it wasn’t the production he had imagined, getting to this point with Daryl, fisting each other’s cocks as they kissed. Daryl’s mouth was hot and his skin was cold. Rick marveled at the smooth gnarled hardness of his cock, the furious aggression in lips and a tongue that couldn’t speak. And then Rick stopped thinking in words and just _felt._ The whole cosmos, flickering between them. They worked like well-oiled, heavy-geared, high-horsepower machinery together, laboring to produce the same thing: the want and the giving, the work and the play of it, all mixed up and enormous in affirmation. _Daryl._ Like the universe was expanding and they were the center – shooting cum a birth of stars across their bellies, cooling and thinning and reminding them that entropy trumped it all in the end.

And it was Daryl holding him close and hard, smearing their cum together. Daryl dropping like his strings were cut, pulling Rick down with him. Sitting opposite, half on each other’s laps, Daryl’s hands digging into his buttocks, _his_ hands reaching round and under to clutch at Daryl’s ass, drag him closer. They fit. Bony knees locked together. And they held each other like that for a while, Daryl nibbling along his neck. Hair soggy with rain. Only one thought left in his brain, how badly he wanted to fuck Daryl next time; he wanted to fuck him until his throat opened and his tongue spoke again.

_How long ya need, then?_ Daryl demanded.

Rick looked down and saw Daryl’s cock, hard and straight up like a dog at attention. He groaned; the man had the refraction time of a teenager. “Shit you’re starved for it,” he teased, and quick as a striking snake Daryl caught his hair and yanked his head back, baring the tender expanse of his throat like he was going to rip it out with his teeth.

“ _Don’t pretend you aint_ ,” he said in a rough cracked whisper that shouldn’t have been arousing but it was, going straight to his dick, which twitched valiantly and began to stiffen. Daryl’s breath was still hot on his neck, and as his erection grew he heard that hoarse little chuckle and looked up. Daryl was trying to school his face into severity but he was losing the battle. Breaking into one of his rare smiles. It threatened to tear his whole face apart, so sharp and narrow it could barely make room for it.

“ _How we gonna do this?_ ” Ever pragmatic, Daryl was peering between their bodies now, doing the math, one plus one equals two. Rick kept quiet, waiting for Daryl to make up his mind. Anything he wanted, Rick would give it to him, so long as he could keep Daryl like this a while longer, naked from the waist down, shirt open on his chest, rain and gooseflesh and bluegreyblue eyes.

“ _Imma sit on you this time._ ” Lips close, warm breath tickling his ear. “ _An’ back home,_ ” Daryl continued in his barely-there whisper, but Rick heard him like church bells, “ _I’m gonna fuck you inta the wall til all yer bones turn ta jelly._ ”

_Daryl – !_ Never could’ve imagined something like that coming out of Daryl’s mouth, even without laryngitis, and _fuck you inta the wall_ pounded against his eardrums. But just as important, Daryl had called the prison _home_ , he’d never done that before, never made out like it was anything more than the latest wayside inn on the road to nowhere. But it was home, and it was where he was going to take Rick to fuck him into the wall til all his bones turned to jelly.

Daryl was screwing up his face and pulling away. _What?_ said Rick. _Can’t have you lookin while I –_ Daryl tried to pivot, turn his back, but Rick wouldn’t let him. Held him fast. Keeping pace with Daryl made his head spin – one moment the unbridled aggression of _gonna fuck you inta the wall_ , the next flushing scarlet shame and refusing to meet his eyes – _Get back here_ Rick ordered, grabbing his hips. _You aint goin nowhere._

Daryl consented to being pulled back between Rick’s knees, hooking his legs over Rick’s. Still bright red, eyes slitted, thighs quivering as he fought the impulse to slam them shut. Rick stared. The place between Daryl’s legs was dark and inviting. Clenched so tight he didn’t know how he’d ever get inside. Rick blew into his cupped hands to warm them and Daryl sneered at him. _Quit babyin. Just fucken –_

_Do it_. Daryl grunted at the first press of Rick’s finger. But he wasn’t fighting him and it was easier than Rick had imagined, inching his pointer farther and farther until he was up to the knuckle. He wriggled his finger a bit more and Daryl tightened around the intrusion, muscles squeezing like a Venus flytrap. Teeth bared, rigid. Then a tentative little flutter, and the pressure around Rick’s finger eased slightly. _Want another?_ Rick said and Daryl exhaled; Rick could feel him trying to relax. _Yeah. Go on then._ Accommodating him more readily this time. The inside of Daryl was very different from the outside. Soft, delicate, unmarred. Rick closed his eyes and counted in his head so he wouldn’t fuck it up and let his fingers deprive his dick of all Daryl’s silky-smooth heat by coming too soon.

Hasty fingers and a spit-slick cock; it wasn’t what he would have chosen but it would have to do. Daryl braced his hands against his shoulders, and slowly, slowly –

Daryl’s eyes, enormous blue orbs blown wide with shock –

Rick wrapped his arms around him. _Oh god_ –

It took a long time. Daryl squirmed and fidgeted and cursed to himself, lower lip drawn between his teeth. And it was up to Rick to hold perfectly still as he rocked back and forth, lowering himself ever so slowly, until with a funny little bump, they were _there._

“ _Motherfucker_ ,” Daryl breathed, and Rick could only agree. Chilly rock beneath them and every time the wind changed cold drizzle spattered across their faces and dripped down their collars. But it was warm and snug inside Daryl. His cock convulsed in giddy appreciation.

“Are you –” he began, suddenly aware of his own greedy pleasure and how much it was costing Daryl to gift him this.

_M’fine._ Daryl’s cheeks were still pink but the burning redness was gone. His lips were parted, his gaze intent and focused. Cock bumping insistently against Rick’s stomach. _Let’s go._

As Rick gave a tentative thrust upward and Daryl answered with a decisive push forward, Rick suddenly thought he understood now, why people destroyed their families, ruined friendships and generally fucked up their lives for sex. A painful jolt of compassion for Shane, for Lori – but he’d consider that later, because Daryl was _here._ With him.

There wasn’t much leverage, rocking to and fro on the ground. But they could hold each other, eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose. Rick couldn’t look away. Because this, the sex – it wasn’t something they were _doing_ , really. It was _them_ , happeningto the universe. Legs splayed out like stars, turning each other inside out. And the pleasure built slowly, languorously. _C’mon, Rick, c’mon, gimme_ Daryl was gasping, and Rick worked his hand between them to find Daryl’s cock, rubbing at the leaking slit with his thumb. Daryl bit the tip of his nose in rough approval. They rocked faster. Daryl’s legs began to tremble and Rick felt the heat coiling in his belly. _Are you - ?_ he asked and Daryl shook the hair from his eyes. _Yeah, gonna_ – Daryl’s hips juddered and his mouth fell open in a perfect _O_ of surprise at the way his body was taking over, hurtling him towards the unknown. “ _Rick –_ ” His throat tore open.

Half a second was all it took for Rick to catch up and they came together – atoms splitting at the center. A backasswards big bang, they vanished into absolute zero. Before space and time, before everything. _Daryl. Daryl._

Rainwater was dripping from dark hair, coursing over twin demons inked in eternal embrace. Rick blinked; he couldn’t recall shoving Daryl’s shirt off his shoulders. Loath to move, he watched the progress of the raindrops over pale skin and old scars. He felt Daryl’s muscles contract and clutched him all the tighter, _don’t go_ , but all that happened was the familiar scrape and click of a lighter, and Daryl exhaled deeply.

“I’m still inside you,” Rick murmured.

“Don’t mean I can’t smoke,” Daryl grunted, hoarse as sin.

“You got your voice back,” Rick observed, smug. Damn right he fucked that tongue back to life – “Sonnuva _bitch_!” he yelped, as Daryl clenched down on his sensitive cock and squeezed viciously. “Leggo alright, you fucker!” Smirking, Daryl relaxed around him, but Rick wasn’t any happier when the other man pulled off, breaking the spell. All of a sudden the ground felt harder, the rain colder.

Daryl sat back on his haunches and stiffened, peering between his legs as Rick’s cum began to leak out of him. “Feels weird,” he said, frowning, and Rick couldn’t resist stretching out his fingers and trying to plug some of it back inside him. Daryl hissed and Rick gentled his touch, easing tender skin still flushed and stretched by his own presence within. “This okay?” he said, and Daryl nodded jerkily. _Guess it shouldn’t go ta waste._ Rick laughed, _damn right_ , and he just had to lean in and kiss him. Daryl with his wet hair and his open legs and his bluegreyblue eyes.

The taste of tobacco, Daryl blowing smoke from his nose and flicking the cigarette aside so he could respond in kind. Hands steady on Rick’s shoulders, lips soft on his.

Rick sighed when the kiss ended. “Don’t wanna be the one to say we should head back.”

“I’ll say it then,” Daryl said. “’M freezin my balls off.”

Daryl put a bolt through a walker while Rick was reluctantly putting on his pants, and after that he wasn’t so keen to stick around either. They tramped back to the car in silence, but it was a different kind of silence. Daryl was looking at him now, flushed with the unmistakable glamour of just-been-fucked and Rick knew he wore it too, the fine sheen of _Daryl_ that had settled, sparkling, over his skin. 

_God I love you._

Sliding into the driver’s seat, Daryl shot him a wary look. _Don’t say it if ya don’t mean it_ those eyes said.

_You weren’t supposed to hear that._ Rick stared at the floor. _Meant to say it later. Next month, next year. In my head it’s like we’ve been doing this forever, you and me._

Daryl didn’t say anything for a long time. He started the car and switched on the wipers. Rick looked over at his hands; they were easy on the wheel at ten and two. No white knuckles. The star between thumb and forefinger still pointed north.

“You want me ta say it back?” Daryl said at last. They’d been on the road a good fifteen minutes.

“Only if…” _Only if you feel it. Won’t be mad if you don’t._ Which was true, he wouldn’t be _mad_ , but something in him might break. Daryl was nothing like the sun; he was a deep and dazzling darkness, the only kind of forever Rick could imagine anymore.

“Aint gonna say I do,” Daryl said. Rick dug fingernails into the palms of his hands and felt himself splinter along the fault lines. “Meant like I aint gonna say _I Do_ ,” Daryl croaked hastily, taking his eyes off the road and sending them bouncing over a pothole. “Like sacramental shit, dumbass.”

“What about the other shit?” A flutter of hope in his heart. Daryl glanced over and patted his knee, hand lingering for just a second before he replaced it on the wheel.

“Might,” he said, infuriatingly.

Hope beat its wings more persistently. “I give you your damn voice back, the least you could –”

“Quit distractin me,” Daryl said. “Gotta drive.”

He might’ve sweated it but Daryl was _playing_ with him; Daryl who never fucking played was smirking and teasing and _god that has to mean something, doesn’t it? You don’t play with anyone else, don’t make anyone else want to claw their eyes out – …_ Next time, Rick thought, next time they’d do it right. He’d touch Daryl all over and find the spots that made his toes curl. Then he’d distract him by playing with his nipples as he drifted down his body and took him gently in his mouth. Daryl would muffle a shout into the pillow and fight against himself, determined not to lose control. But Rick would lap at his cock and suck him hard and dirty, and Daryl would have no choice, he’d have to let go and feel it. Daryl writhing in utter abandonment, his hot skin tightening –… Rick had to reach down and adjust his jeans.

Daryl’s mouth curved upwards and two spots of color flared high on his cheekbones.

A few miles later they passed a pair of walkers feeding on a corpse, a human one, and Rick glimpsed the tan of a state trooper’s uniform before Daryl put his foot to the gas and sped them onwards. The quality of the air changed and Rick wasn’t surprised when Daryl’s hand found his knee again and remained there until they passed through the prison gates. It was still raining and the courtyard was empty, desolate. Daryl brought the car to a stop but made no move to get out, staring ahead through the windshield. Then he turned to Rick and nodded once.

Rick took a chance and leaned into kiss him. Daryl kissed him back, like it was the easiest thing he’d ever done.


End file.
